How the Should I Fish? Fishability Score Works
Every hour of every day gets a score from 0 to 100. The score is a model, not a guarantee—it combines five environmental factors that correlate with inshore saltwater bite activity, using public tide, weather, and astronomical data. Here is exactly how it’s built.
The inputs
Five factors, weighted
Tide movement
35%Fish feed on moving water, not on height. We score the rate of change of the tide—how fast it's rising or falling—not the water level itself. Slack water at the top or bottom scores near zero even though the tide is at its peak. The outgoing tide gets a modest bonus, the stronger producer for most inshore species.
Solunar
20%Major periods (the moon overhead or directly underfoot) and minor periods (moonrise and moonset) each get a window of elevated scoring that fades away from the peak. Full and new moons score slightly higher than quarter moons.
Pressure trend
20%A steadily falling barometer ahead of a front tends to trigger feeding; a sharp rise right behind one (a “bluebird” day) tends to shut it down. We score the 24-hour trailing pressure change plus the current reading.
Light
15%Dawn and dusk score highest. Night scores moderately. Bright midday sun scores lowest, softened somewhat by cloud cover.
Wind
10%A light-to-moderate breeze (5–12 knots) scores best—enough chop to move bait without making the water unfishable. Dead calm and strong wind both score lower.
The adjustments
Gate, then bonus
The safety gate
cap 25If sustained wind or gusts exceed 25 knots, or the barometer is crashing at storm speed, the hour’s score is capped at 25 and flagged unsafe—regardless of how favorable the other factors look. A great tide during a small-craft advisory is still a bad idea.
The stacked-window bonus
When strong tide movement, a solunar period, and good light all cross their thresholds in the same hour, that overlap is disproportionately productive—the “drop everything and go” signal. The hour gets a flat 10-point bonus on top of its weighted score.
The output
Verdict thresholds
The daily verdict comes from the best bite window of the day:
The same three colors mean the same thing everywhere on the site—the curve, the hourly strip, the day chips, and the dial.
The windows
How bite windows are extracted
A bite window is a contiguous run of hours scoring 65 or higher. Two qualifying runs separated by a single dip are merged into one window. We surface the top two windows per day, each labeled with its peak score and the driver behind it—for example, “outgoing tide + major solunar.”
What this is, and isn’t
This is a deterministic model built from public NOAA tide data, weather data, and astronomical calculations—not a live report from anglers on the water, and not a promise of fish. Conditions change, forecasts shift, and no model replaces judgment on the water. Always check official marine forecasts before heading out.